This weekend I finished the campaign for HALO 4. I have to say I really enjoyed it, even the ending, which the series has usually botched in previous installments. It leaves some pretty big questions open, but considering how well 343's first run at the series turned out I'm looking forward to seeing how those questions are answered in upcoming games in the series. The last couple of days I've been playing through the first three chapters of Spartan Ops. So for I haven't enjoyed Sparton Ops as much as I did Reach's Firefight mode, but I am enjoying the story cut scenes so far so it's not a total disappointment. There are a few standout missions though particularly one where you get in a Mantis and waste tons of Covies.

I'm going to do a little achievement hunting in HALO 4. Mainly I need to locate the rest of the terminals I didn't find on my campaign play-through and I'll keep checking in each week for the next Spartan Ops chapter but for now I'm going to be shifting focus again to my backlog. HALO has me in a sci-fi mood so I've decided to tackle Dead Space 2 next. I've had it for ages and have barely started the game at all.

It's been a busy week so I haven't had much of a chance to get any gaming in. I did pick up HALO 4 on launch day but so far I've only gotten about two thirds of the way through the campaign due to time constraints. I haven't even touched Spartan Ops or multiplayer mainly because I don't want to get the campaign story spoiled for me by someone in voice chat. I should finish off the campaign and get into Spartan Ops this weekend, at least I hope so because I'm also going to be splitting time with Guild Wars 2. I'm going to hope back into GW2 some this weekend to participate in the The Lost Shores world event. Speaking of MMOs I checked out Old Republic a bit yesterday now that it's gone free to play. I haven't logged in since I canceled my account when GW2 launched and I have to say they've really missed the boat on free to play with this one. Wanting to you pay for basic things like action bars? Good luck with that.

I'm really amazed so far by the work that 343 has done taking over the HALO franchise. The graphics and sound upgrades in the new game are amazing to a degree I never expect from a 7 year old console. Even though HALO will never win any awards for storytelling the new game does raise the bar for the series and the actors have some much meatier lines to work though this time. Jen Talyor's performance as Cortana really shines through this time, and I just voted for her over at the Spike VGAs.

After work tonight I'm stopping by the AMC to catch a showing of Lincoln. I'm pretty interested to see what Colin Moriarty, IGN's resident history buff, thinks about Lincoln as a film.

In between various football games and seeing a couple of movies this weekend I did finish off the HALO WARS campaign. I enjoyed the game but that last mission complete cut scene was utterly ridiculous. I guess HALO WARS is about as good an example of an RTS as you can find on console. It's a shame the developer no longer exists. I would have liked to have seen what they could have done in a sequel. I'm going to put off working on the backlog for a bit now since tomorrow is the HALO 4 launch as well as election day. I really wish those two events were on separate days. I'm reconsidering doing Iron Brigade next next since I just did a strategy game. I may go in a completely different direction instead, but I'm probably not going to do decide until I get quite a few HALO 4 hours in. I caught Wreck it Ralph these weekend and I have to say I loved it. I'd definitely recommend seeing it.

I put in a couple of hours last night on HALO WARS and got through five more missions which got me about halfway through the campaign. I should be able finish over the weekend barring any unforeseen circumstances. I got to the Scarab mission and got lit up pretty badly so I’m going to have to think on some strategy for that one. I think my mistake was in making tanks. I figured I’d need something heavy hitting to take the scarab down, but tanks are just too slow moving to avoid its beam. I’ll probably have to run a fleet of warthogs or something.

After working on HALO WARS for a few hours I shifted gears and played some more Forza 4. I’m really digging the game, but I’m going to have to keep tweaking the settings. At times it feels like the computer is doing too much of the driving for me because of all of the various assists, but when I tried turning them off I could barely keep the car on the road. I’ll have to try some experimentation to find that sweet spot where the driving is challenging but not so difficult it becomes grueling.

Looking ahead I think the next game from my backlog I’m going to focus on after HALO WARS is Trenched/Iron Brigade. I got about halfway through it back when it came out and loved it but put it down to play something else and just never went back to it.

Yesterday my gaming time was cut a bit short but I did manage to knock out the first two missions of the HALO WARS campaign before calling it a night.

First I went to the theater yesterday evening to catch a horror movie which has become a Halloween tradition for me over the last 7 or 8 years. This year’s offering was Paranormal Activity 4. It was better than part 3 but still not nearly as good as the first two entries in the series. I guess they’ll continue to churn one out every year considering how profitable the series is for the studio, but they’re really running out of ideas to keep the story and scares fresh.

On my way to the theater I stopped by Best Buy and picked up a new Xbox. I’ve been looking to upgrade my console for a while now mainly because the one I have has the 120 GB drive and with the number of games I have now it’s getting to be a pain trying to find room for things. Also, the one I have doesn’t have the built in wireless so I’ve been using a long Ethernet cable to get online. The new console bundle comes with Forza 4 which I’ve been eyeing for a while and also Skyrim so overall it’s a very good deal. I originally played Skyrim on PS3 but had to give it up because of all of the technical glitches the game suffers on that platform. I’m looking forward to getting back to it on my 360.

Once I got home I had to do the initial console setup and license transfer. After that I used a transfer cable to move all of my data from the old drive to the new console and that took a long time to complete. I then downloaded Skyrim using the Live code included in the box. It was pretty late before everything was done. I took Forza 4 for a spin (I can see now that I’m going to lose a lot of hours in that game) and created a character in Skyrim.

Finally, to finish out the night I booted up HALO WARS. I quickly learned that it had been so long since I’ve played the game that I’d forgotten most of the controls so I had to run through the tutorial again. I restarted the campaign from the beginning and completed the first two missions before I finally had to knock off for the night. I should be able to make a decent dent in the campaign this evening.